title: Controlling the femtosecond laser-driven transformation of dicyclopentadiene into cyclopentadiene.
abstract: Dynamics of the chemical transformation of dicyclopentadiene into cyclopentadiene in a supersonic molecular beam is elucidated using femtosecond time-resolved degenerate pump-probe mass spectrometry. Control of this ultrafast chemical reaction is achieved by using linearly chirped frequency modulated pulses. We show that negatively chirped femtosecond laser pulses enhance the cyclopentadiene photo-product yield by an order of magnitude as compared to that of the unmodulated or the positively chirped pulses. This demonstrates that the phase structure of femtosecond laser pulse plays an important role in determining the outcome of a chemical reaction.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur 208016, India.
authors.forename: Tapas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Goswami
authors.forename: Dipak K
authors.initials: DK
authors.lastname: Das
authors.forename: Debabrata
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Goswami